


Thief of Time

by kangeiko



Category: Alias
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Community: fanfic100, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-12
Updated: 2008-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:57:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yahtzee wanted a magical mystery fic where Jack and Irina have a happily ever after... take 2!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thief of Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yahtzee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/gifts).



> fanfic100 Jack Bristow and Arvin Sloane #10 - Years. My table is [here](http://kangeiko.livejournal.com/113677.html).

It takes seventeen months, all told, to do it all again. That includes a month and a half at the start to dig himself free, fingers scrabbling at the dirt and the ground giving way in tiny increments. All in all, it's a startling display of efficiency; or, would be, if there had been anyone to oppose him.

As it is, Arvin Sloane had the remainder of Rambaldi's surviving artefacts assembled in a top-secret bunker in a remote Chinese province in less than a year and a half.

Life really is a lot easier when you're dead.

*

"That's the last one," Bel said.

Sloane looked up from his book. He's reading _The Divine Comedy_ this week, and is somewhere in the middle of _Purgatorio_. Bel thinks it awfully apt. "You're sure?"

"If your list is complete." She consulted the stack of paper again, flipping through intricate diagrams. "I still think it might not have worked right. We didn't have that much of the serum left, and -"

"I'm not paying you to think," Sloane said in a measured tone. He uncrossed his legs and stood slowly, closing the book and setting it to one side. "Shall we go and look at our thirty pieces of silver, my dear?"

Bel rolled her eyes a little at that but followed him obediently, her steps too heavy for Nadia's thin form.

At the door to the vault, Sloane paused. "You should be happier, my dear," he said eventually. He reached out a hand, fingertips stopping mere millimetres from her borrowed skin. Bel fought the urge to shudder. "You're almost free."

"Almost," she acknowledged.

(The needlemarks on her arms will not fade, one of Sloane's doctors informed her, but so what? She's lucky that the Helix is reversable. And she is, she is, she is.)

*

It's not a large device - certainly nothing like Mueller's contraptions - but it has a certain weight to it. No, not weight, precisely. Gravity, maybe? It looks _rooted_, somehow, as if it has found a bit of mountain it likes and it's staying put.

Sloane knows that look. It usually had sarcasm and a gun attached.

"It doesn't look very big," 'Nadia' said.

(He's long since stopped thinking of her as Bel. He couldn't help it.)

"Neither's Project Helix, but that got the job done," he says. He can't spare her any more attention. It's here.

_It's here._

"How soon can we start?"

The techs jump to attention. "Immediately, sir. Everything's ready."

He smiled. "Excellent."

*

"I would strongly advice you against this," Shen said.

"Any particular reason?"

Lounging in the back, Bel popped her gum and studied her nails. Sloane grimaced. "For God's sake, cross your legs, child."

Shen stared.

"Doctor?" Sloane was still running through all the calculations, as if they made any sense outside of a supercomputer.

"Nothing," Shen said faintly.

Sloane's eyes were very bright.

"Nothing."

*

"Well?"

Sloane looked up. Smiled. "It's time."

*

There's an old tv show: _Dr Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator... and vanished._ It's almost like that, except it's totally not. There's no Al, or Ziggy, or 'reality' back home. There are no techs; there is no lab. There's no goddamn machine anymore.

*

The lockpick is perfect, of course, and he is inside the villa undetected two days before he ever visits the place. He knows exactly where to look - in _this_ room, in _that_ desk, beneath _those_ papers.

It's a little thing, in the end, a tiny, insignificant scrap of paper written in an archaic code.

*

_Sydney's daughter adores her auntie Nadia, mainly because Nadia smuggles forbidden lipsticks to her when her mother isn't looking. _

_Sydney is always studiously 'not looking'._

_//_

_It's entirely possible that the new AD has a high-school crush on Jack Bristow. It's hysterical, and he doesn't notice it at all._

_Irina does, though. Irina notices the entire thing._

_By the end of the month, she's at APO, and AD Jennifer Wilkes is out of luck._

_//_

_They're going fishing, because this is what almost-friends do._

_Jack doesn't fish. He's promised to drown Arvin in the lake if he's woken before dawn at any point during this almost-vacation._

_Arvin's almost sure he's joking._

*

One hundred and eleven years after he dug through earth and grit and rubble, scrabbling with torn fingers and little breath to find Jack Bristow's corpse, Arvin Sloane has a genius of an idea.

No, really. It's perfect.

And all it would cost would be his soul.

*

He looked down at the scrap of parchment; tried to recall the fervor of this, his first link to Rambaldi.

_A steal at twice the price._

It made a very satisfying crackling sound as it burned.

*

_One century later, Belinda Vaughn looks in the mirror and thinks that maybe she'd look better with dark hair._

*

fin


End file.
